What's the message behind Trump's military parade?

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🗓️ 2 June 2025

⏱️ 9 minutes

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Summary

In the past, most military parades in the U.S. were staged to signal the end of a war and welcome home of those who fought.

The last major military parade in the nation's capitol was in 1991. It marked the end of the Gulf War.

The capital has not seen a military parade like the one planned by President Trump for June 14th in decades - a parade estimated to cost $45 million.

NPR's Ari Shapiro speaks with historian Joshua Zeitz. He's a contributing editor for Politico Magazine and has written about where Trump's parade fits into the American tradition.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The debate about the military parade that President Trump has planned this month really boils down to one big question.
0:06.7	Who and what is it for?
0:08.6	Trump told NBC's Meet the Press that it was about celebrating the armed forces.
0:12.4	We're going to have a big, beautiful parade.
0:14.2	A military parade?
0:15.0	Yeah, sure.
0:15.9	We're going to celebrate our military.
0:17.1	We have the greatest military in the world.
0:19.3	People, peanuts compared to the value of doing it.
0:24.0	The official occasion is the 250th anniversary of the establishment of the U.S. Army, June 14th.
0:31.0	That day also happens to be Trump's 79th birthday.
0:34.1	Democratic Senator Adam Schiff of California called it a vanity project in the model of
0:38.5	would-be dictators around the world. This was in a post on social media last month. To use the
0:43.2	military in this manner, when Donald Trump is slashing veterans benefits, to aggrandize himself,
0:49.4	to communicate to the country, his control over the military, is just another shameful act of this administration.
0:57.7	There has been military hardware on the streets of D.C. before. Take President John F. Kennedy's
1:02.4	inaugural parade. Head of the parade, a replica of a Navy PT boat, like that commanded by
1:07.6	President Kennedy in the Pacific in World War II, with most of his crew on hand.
1:12.5	It also featured dozens of missiles.
1:14.8	And some 22,000 troops marched in Dwight D. Eisenhower's inaugural parade,
1:19.4	along with a cannon that could fire a nuclear warhead.
1:22.4	But it's been more than 30 years since D.C. saw a parade like the one Trump is planning.
	...

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